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Mourning the End of Epinions Community

In September of 1999, back in the last millennium, just as the “Dot Boom” was warming up, and “The Internet” was starting to catch on, I joined an online site for user-generated reviews (UGC, way, way ahead of its time) called epinions.com.

I produced about a dozen review in short order, and for a time was one of their top reviewers. I earned my first money from the internet, as I was paid a penny for each verified viewing and a few pennies more if viewers registered and followed and rated my reviews or chose to “trust” my opinions (early community self-moderation). It was my first first-hand experience with micro transactions, but I came to understand how important small amounts, aggregated, could be.

On May 11, 2001, Epinions paid me the first money that I directly made from online content, in the form of an aggregated check for $60. I wish I had taken a picture of it, like those $1 bills that retailers put on their walls, as a reminder that yes, you CAN make money on the internet, and not just as a pornographer, but actually as a writer and opinionator.

Sadly, I drifted away from opinions, and didn’t write any reviews after 2004, almost a decade ago. I stopped going there, and eventually, my account was de-activated, though my reviews remained as content, as long as they received positive feedback. It would seem I wasn’t alone in abandoning Epinions.

I guess it was Google that killed Epinions. Epinions was a portal for comments, user-guidance, and opinion, and Google became a direct outlet to find the distributed content at its source, making a portal and central location unnecessary. The business model stopped working; the universe changed.

Today, Epinions sent out a letter to all their current and past contributors, letting them know that their “community related operations” (reviews and reviewing and discussing of same) was closing down. They were calling that part quits. They had been beaten.

I feel a loss, that the first place I “worked on the Internet” is basically going out of business (at least the business I remember it for). I’m glad that my review of the Ceiva Digital Picture Frame 8.5 in. Flat Panel LCD Monitor will still be around. That review alone paid for half of my 1/3 share of the device that my brother, sister and I gifted to my dad.